Remember those friendship bracelets we tied and knotted and gifted when friends were just about as important as breathing? Me too. I made a lot of them growing up. I would knot them around my ankles in the summer and give them away to my BFFs.
Friendship bracelets date back to Central America Indian crafts and there are even some knotted bracelets that date back to 481 to 221 B.C. China. They didn’t make their way to America until the 1970s, but they haven’t really left. (Side note: Everything from my life as as a 7th grader is on the streets: scrunchies, Tommy Hilfiger, Doc Martens, friendship bracelets.) A friendship bracelet is given as a sign of friendship and is tied onto the wrist of a friend and meant to be worn continually as a sign of friendship.
About a week ago, there was a slew of young girls and mommas knotting and braiding bracelets in my kitchen. It was not intentionally thought out, but these bracelets were a sort of small celebration of the friendships created the past five years. You see, it was the last playdate with my sweet friend, Nicole, and her girls (at least for awhile). Her family is moving across the country to California. As I sat there watching everyone braid and chat and weave, I thought about the friendships formed and nurtured in this group. How God can take different people with different upbringings and backgrounds and lives and intertwine them together, exactly the way one would braid a bracelet.
As the morning turned into afternoon and everyone packed up to leave, I thought about how it has been such a gift to love and do life with these people. It was not lost on me that I have experienced friendship in a real, pure, profound way. The way God intended. And 1,600 miles won’t change that.
Friends have always been important to me and through the years I have made friends, loved friends, moved away from friends, and had friends move away from me. But you know what? I am close to many of them still today. And I know that will be true with Nicole and her family. Forever friendships are the kind you know, even before someone does the leaving, that time or location won’t change anything. It will be just as it was when coming together again. Apart, but not separated.
Even when the leaving and saying ‘see you later’ hurts, I know it isn’t final. It’s just a new beginning…of doing friendship a little differently.
Here’s to friends…the forever kind. May we have them. May we love them. May we have known them in a way that saying ‘see you later’ seems impossible and hopeful all at the same time.